Monday, January 31, 2011

Bonsai Pots Again

Woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling that I had been thinking (or dreaming) about my bonsai pots. I went on thinking about them, and my thought was, 'Why am I trying to make them in white clay?' I'm concerned about having unglazed clay showing near the bottoms of the feet, and underneath where I want to have my signature, so why am I using a white clay? The glazes I am planning to use are all dark and earthy to show off the bonsais.

Good point, so I went shopping today and got a few boxes of a nice dark brown-firing stoneware. Have to do some testing, but I'm thinking the problem of the white feet is solved.

One pot looking good so far - nice dark brown glaze with lighter, bronzy highlights, and NO CRACKS!

Also got some of those bendable plastic 'trugs' they sell for gardening use. I think they are going to be just the thing for holding enough glaze to dip these pots. The pots are too wide to go into any pail, and too tall to go in the trays I have. These (I got two sizes, one about 16" across at the bottom and one about 22" across) will be wide enough and deep enough, and not need a hundred gallons of glaze to fill. Making enough glaze to dip large pots can get costly!

Glazing tomorrow......

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